Eggless Honey Cake 🍯 🎂

Honey Cake...a cake drenched in sugar syrup with jam and coconut frosting... Our childhood special cake in bakeries. Bit over sweet yet a yummy moist cake.

This one was in my to-do cake list for a long time... As this is my Husband's favourite cake (surprisingly, he does not eat over-sweet goodies).

Now... Now... Now... It's his birthday today. So if there is a day to bake this cake... Then it is today.... Right? 😉😄

Yessssss....I baked it today...No eggs, no butter, and no beater. A simple whisk-it-all process.

Okay, how did I get this recipe? The answer is very simple. I googled and directly hopped in to one of my favourite kitchens... "Raks Kitchen ".  I believe in her recipes blindly. Last night I decided to bake this cake... And with no prior trials, I made the cake with great confidence today.  The taste was not too sweet and the cake turned out perfect.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR 🎂 😄

Fine...Now to the recipe...

INGREDIENTS:

For the cake:
Maida/flour - 1¼ cup
Condensed milk - 14 tbsp
Oil - ½ cup
Orange juice (I used water)  - ½ cup
Powdered sugar - 3 tbsp
Baking powder - 1 tsp
Baking soda - ½ tsp
Lemon Juice (I used ACV) - 1 tsp
Vanilla essence (I used orange essence) - 1 tsp

For the syrup:
Water – ½ cup
Sugar – 2 tbsp
Honey – ¼ cup
Vanilla essence - ½ tsp

For the frosting:
Mixed fruit jam – 4 tbsp
Powdered Sugar – 1 tsp
Orange red food colour - a pinch
Desiccated coconut – as required

METHOD:

For the cake:
1. Seive maida, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl and mix well. Set it aside.
2. In another bowl add the remaining ingredients and whisk well.
3. Now add the maida mixture to it and whisk gently till everything combines well.
4. Pour the batter into a greased and lined baking pan and bake it in a preheated oven @ 180°C for about 30 mins or till the cake is done.
5. Remove the cake from the baking pan, invert it and remove the lining paper. Let it cool.

While the cake is baking, prepare the syrup and frosting and let it cool.

For the syrup:
1. Mix sugar and water and let it boil till the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat.
2. When the syrup is WARM, add honey and vanilla essence and mix well. Let it cool.

For the frosting:
1. Mix jam, powdered sugar and food colour and heat it in low flame and keep stirring it to melt to a smooth paste. It just takes a minute. Remove from heat.

I trimmed the top and then inverted the cake for frosting

Cake assembling:
1. Maintain the cake in inverted position (bottom side as top),  as it gives a flat surface to frost easily.
2. Now prick holes all over the flat surface using a toothpick.
3. Spoon the sugar syrup slowly and generously on top, for the cake to absorb it through the pricked holes.
4. Over it, spread the jam paste and top it with dessicated coconut.

My tips:
1. My 1 cup measures 240 ml.
2. For the cake,  I didn't have orange juice in hand, so I used water and orange essence instead and avoided the vanilla essence.
3. I substituted lemon juice with equal measure of ACV.
4. For the frosting,  my jam was brown in color, so I added a pinch of orange red food color.
5. I baked ¾th of the measurements in a loaf pan for 30 mins.
6. Finally I trimmed the sides of the cake to give a neater look.